Should a 7 Year Old with Leukemia be Allowed Medical Marijuana?

7 year old Mykayla Comstock suffers from an extremely aggressive strain of leukemia. To try and combat the cancer, she undergoes intensive chemotherapy which leaves her feeling violently ill and sleepless most nights. Mykayla’s mother, Erin Purchase, opted to go the natural route and give her daughter prescribed medical marijuana capsules and, if Mykayla is feeling especially ill, a brownie or gingersnap marijuana confection.

Many wonder if giving a 7 year old medical marijuana, despite her medical condition, could eventually be harmful to their development. Mykayla’s father, Jesse Comstock, is one of those people. He worries about the effects that marijuana will have on his daughter’s developing brain, and has actively attempted to stop Mykayla’s mother from administering the marijuana capsules. And he probably has every right to worry, considering that science has proven that regular marijuana use in children and teens has adverse effects not only in their intelligence, but also in the development of their neuropsychological functioning.

But do the cons of the adverse effects outweigh the pros of potentially helping a child in pain ease their suffering?

There are alternative treatments available to Mykayla for the nausea and the pain that result from chemotherapy, yet Mykayla’s mother, a regular marijuana user herself who used it during pregnancy and breastfeeding, is insistent upon medical marijuana as a treatment for her daughter. For her part, Mykayla says that the capsules help her to eat and sleep, though they do make her “feel funny.”